Secrets of the Parthenon

A highly sophisticated restoration team is painstakingly reassembling the Parthenon of Athens—a classic Greek building that has suffered from wars, earthquakes, and disastrous previous restoration attempts.

The Parthenon's builders created dauntingly precise yet subtle curves throughout the structure, giving the building its legendary grace.

Etched in the marble itself, the restoration team discovers traces made by the ingenious tools the stonemasons used to carve the blocks with such speed and precision.

Experts examine the extent to which the Parthenon's symmetry and visual harmony is dependent on a system of mathematical proportions.

Two hundred miles from Athens, faint lines left behind on another Greek temple reveal the technique the early engineers used to sculpt the Parthenon's perfect curves. (Excerpt from pbs.org)

A good documentary reliving the building techniques of ancient Greece. It will be nice when they are finished, however modern political, and economical austerity measures would seem to put the whole project in jeopardy.

Thank you very much for this documentary. Ancient Greeks built it and it is my belief that only modern Greeks could have the will and determination to rebuild it after 2500 years. With the exact same materials, tools and methods, which makes this project very painful, challenging and expensive. When it is finished 40 years will have passed and a thousand problems will have been solved. And it will be perfect and worthy of our heritage.

These kind of projects which project the great qualities of this nation, in a period the world is provided only with the bad qualities, the crisis and everybody blames the Greeks, these kind of documentaries and the hard work of my fellow citizens makes me proud to be called a Greek.

Enjoyable and containing lots of architectural information. My only wonder is the multiple use of the term B.C.E. It means Before Current Era. Greece is a Christrian culture and there are still lots of Christians around so one might ask what's with this BCE instead of BC: Is someone offended by BC? Before Christ? If so: What's the problem?

If you really want to work on this project, I think the Greek Ministry of Culture offers unpaid internships in collab. with the University of Athens for foreign scholars and architects who want to work on this project. At least it did some time ago. You could "google" it or visit their website. I think the "Acropolis Restoration Project" has a website of it's own but I'm not sure.

Sick of Lies
- 12/29/2009 at 07:05

Yes,good doc.. Too bad we have been lead astray as to craftsmanship in today's modern world. Good luck finding even a real carpenter nowadays who can level and plumb a door...